Various miracles were recorded as having taken place around Beverley minster where the body of the saint, John of Beverley (died 721) was buried. One of these records an incident when a boy, keen to watch a drama about Christ’s passion being performed in the churchyard, climbed up high inside the minster to get a good view, but fell to the paving beneath and was apparently dead, but then returned to life. The account is vivid, and ends with an allegorical coda drawing parallels with Christ’s death and resurrection.

Felix wrote his life of St. Guthlac also during the zenith of Latin writings in Anglo-Saxon England, namely in the early eighth century. In vivid, distinctive Latin Felix tells of the experiences of this solitary who went off into the fens of East Anglia to devote himself to God at Crowland, including his dramatic encounters with the demons of hell and various unusual miracles, including the retrieval of a parchment folio carried off by a thieving magpie.

Birinus, who was to become bishop of Dorchester and a missionary in southern England, came from Rome in the seventh century. An anonymous writer of the late eleventh-century wrote a distinctive Latin biography of Birinus, with a highly rhetorical style. Here the account of Birinus’ crossing of the English Channel, involving a miracle, is included, both in the Anonymous version and in a verse version of the thirteenth century by the prolific Latin poet Henry of Avranches.

One of the miracles associated with king Henry VI (for whom an application for canonisation was unsuccessfully made) is included here from the anonymous collection of miracles made around 1500. This miracle involves the healing of a painful injury to the groin incurred in a country football match, a sport which the writer disparages.

The theme of safe-guarding, accidents and death is demonstrated by reference to the bishops’ advice regarding the protection of babies, and the necessary measures to be taken in case of illness and death, including emergency baptism and Caesarean section. Accidents often occurred, especially to children, and this might lead, in more fortunate cases, to healing and even revival by means of a miracle. Miracle accounts are balanced by coroners’ accounts which record the details of death, often by misadventure, as in the case here of a young woman scalded to death by falling into a brewer’s vat.

Ælred is principally famous for his spiritual works such as his work on friendship, written at the Cistercian monastery of Rievaulx in Yorkshire. Less well known is the letter he wrote to a friend regarding the dramatic incident involving a young girl at the Gilbertine monastery of Watton. The girl, after a sexual liaison with a young man in the male part of the monastery, becomes pregnant but when the nuns discover this they treat her and the man with brutality. When she gives birth, a miracle occurs and the baby disappears, apparently in accordance with God’s will. Ælred is asked to investigate and reports in a very compassionate and perceptive manner in subtle and beautiful Latin prose.

This chapter analyses the relationship between the two Plinys by examining how the Younger integrates subjects known from the Elder’s Naturalis Historia in his Epistles. The Younger Pliny adapts the miracle stories to the epistolary genre by selecting individual ones from his uncle’s long lists. One elaborate example replaces scientific completeness and remains in the readers’ mind because of its emotional value for Pliny and the addressee. By presenting the miracles of Italy (a volcanic eruption, dolphins, lakes, and fountains in Ep. 4.30; 6.16; 6.20; 8.20; 9.33) and repeatedly highlighting his close relationship with his hometown Comum, Pliny shows alternatives to the wondrous phenomena of the world described in the Naturalis Historia and thereby distinguishes himself from his uncle. The Younger Pliny also reflects his uncle’s habit of writing at night (lucubratio) and serving the emperor by day. The chapter shows that the Younger Pliny choses his own time of day to write literature and unite the claims of otium and negotium, of leisure and work, which have a different importance for the two Plinys. In doing so, the Younger Pliny also underlines the differences that arise from his senatorial career and his uncle’s military success.

Two themes have dominated philosophical discussions concerning the rationality of believing a report of a miracle. The first relies on the idea that miracles are by definition massively improbable. The second theme involves the thought that testimony is, in general, not a very reliable source of information. The result of combining these two themes is that it is very difficult – some suggest impossible – to rationally believe that a miracle has occurred on the basis of testimony: on its own, testimony is too weak to outweigh the improbability of a miracle. Both themes are addressed in Hume’s famous essay on miracles. This chapter examines each theme and critically discusses interpretations of and replies to Hume’s argument.

American Protestants have expressed diverse views of how “faith” and “medicine” relate to health. Certain Protestants consider God the source of both illness and healing, while others attribute sickness to demons and wholeness to God. Some rely exclusively on either faith or medicine for healing, while others combine them. Over time, perceived tensions between faith and medicine have diminished, but not disappeared. There are numerous examples of Protestants praying in faith for healing and trusting God to heal through medical means. American Protestants have sometimes conflated rejection of medicine with “faith” and acceptance of medicine with “unbelief” – rather than following a line of logic that one may reject medicine and still lack faith, or accept medicine without wavering in faith.

The chapter analyzes the remarks on the use of languages in hagiographical narratives, including episodes that describe the mundane and miraculous linguistic skills of holy men as well as demons and demoniacs speaking in foreign tongues. References to knowing or speaking foreign languages in the hagiographical tradition were closely connected to expressions of holiness in late antique Christianity, both in social practice and in the realm of rhetoric. The use of language is a performative act that is closely related to issues of social differentiation, power, and control in any society, and even more so in multilingual communities. The appearance of Christian hagiographical narratives that depict miraculous linguistic events and abilities of holy men and demons reveals that symbolic power and authority started to manifest themselves through remarks on one’s multilingual competence or the use of specific languages.

Why do we disagree? Ultimately, it comes down to faith. The Christianity Ruse is rejecting is the Christianity of Kierkegaard. Faith demands a leap into the absurd. Reason and evidence backing up the faith commitment would render it inauthentic. Believe without seeing the scars! Hence, for Ruse, given that he thinks this the only authentic Christianity, all attempts to make sense of Christianity are pointless. You are trying to square the circle. Davies is a committed Christian, a Roman Catholic philosopher, and theologian. For him, faith and reason do not clash; they are complementary. Hence, for Davies it is legitimate – demanded – that he bring reason to bear on his faith beliefs, for instance, concerning the Trinity and the Incarnation. In the end, although there is sympathy for the beliefs of the other and much respect, Michael Ruse and Brian Davies are on different tracks, and they do not run in parallel.

The seventh chapter focuses on later developments in Sufi metaphysics concerning the question of causality and freedom. It examines writings of two influential followers of Ibn ʿArabī: Qūnawī and Qayṣarī. It will be argued that both Qūnawī and Qayṣarī agree with Ibn ʿArabī in their construction of causal efficacy and freedom of entities. What distinguishes both Qūnawī and Qayṣarī is their attempt to understand certain ideas attributed to the Philosophers and Ashʿarites in light of Ibn ʿArabī’s articulation of the concepts of existence (wujūd) and essence (māhiyya). Their writings include references both to the ideas of the Philosophers, such as secondary causality and emanationism, and to the ideas of Ashʿarites, such continuous creation, accidents, and “preponderance without reason” (tarjīh bi-lā murajjih). These thinkers selectively appropriate these ideas defended by different schools by using the philosophical possibilities suggested by the concepts of existence and essence. The result is a critical re-interpretation of emanationist and occasionalist elements within the larger framework of Ibn ʿArabī's metaphysics.

The eleventh chapter steps back from the specifics of the discussion and investigates the strengths and weaknesses of the various proposed theories of causality in the face of certain contemporary philosophical challenges. As a case study, the chapter focuses on a central issue in contemporary discussions of religion and science: the reconciliation of religious claims about divine causation with scientific explanations that depart from the premise that the world is a causally closed system. Here the chapter first provides a brief overview of the important controversies in the discussion of religion and science that are relevant to this topic. It then explores whether the examined theories on causality are viable options for thinking about the divine causality without undermining the rigor of the scientific approach to the world.

From modern perspectives, hagiography is the antithesis, not a sub-species, of historiography: legend and history are distinguished from each other categorically by their truth value. A different relationship obtained between hagiography and history-writing in the premodern period, however, as is witnessed by the term “legend”: while it now identifies a story precisely in terms of its failure to meet standards of historical veracity, in the Middle Ages it identified saints’ Lives as legenda: that which should be read. This chapter explores hagiography as a form of historiography, one that—as an exceptional or limit case—can help us understand how history and history-writing were conceptualized in the Middle Ages, and how they might most usefully be conceptualized in scholarship on the Middle Ages. To this end, the chapter surveys Latin and vernacular hagiography from the early eighth century to the end of the Middle Ages, attending to its narrative forms, its truth claims, its institutional affiliations, its contribution to regional and national histories, and its relation to other genres.